


Legend of the Sea

by a_taller_tale



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Based on a Korean Drama, M/M, Mermaids, Reincarnation, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-05-20 07:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19372249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_taller_tale/pseuds/a_taller_tale
Summary: There's a legend about when a mermaid and a human fall in love...Simmons doesn't know about any of that. He just knows someone keeps breaking into his property and using his pool, and he's determined to catch them.





	1. Chapter 1

**_Once upon a time, a mermaid fell in love with a human…_**

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**_Mermaids swim in the deepest seas as well as the shallows of bays. Their whims are like the tide, and their tears turn to pearls after leaving their eyes. Their songs are so haunting, a human would throw themselves into the ocean to be closer to the sound. They can bless their local fishermen with good catch, or curse any human that touches them without their will._**

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**_Mermaids can appear human and walk on the land if they fall in love, and will only love once in their long lives._**

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**_A long time ago, a young man loved a mermaid…_**

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**_The villagers said he was bewitched. That storms from the sea, and sickness in the town were the mermaid’s doing. It was whispered that two creatures from such different worlds were doomed to tragedy._**

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**_A mermaid and a human fell in love…_**

**_It didn’t end well._**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the Korean Drama "Legend of the Blue Sea" which I binged last weekend and highly recommend. It's available on hulu currently.


	2. Chapter 2

There was someone in Simmons’ swimming pool.

Jet lag was a bitch. Simmons had just woken up, and it was late morning back home in the US, but already well into sunset in Gallicia, Spain. 

He walked out the back door of his rented villa on the water with his freshly dripped coffee and onto the rock outcropping overlooking the ocean, and the heated salt water swimming pool that flowed into the property, separated from the ocean by a low wall. 

He probably shouldn’t be drinking coffee if he wanted to adjust, but fuck it. He was on vacation, and a well-earned one. He’d been hired as a “freelancer” to dig up some dirt on some CEO’s sexual harassment accuser, and charged a really nice retainer for it. …And drained a couple of his accounts once they had his bank information. 

After making a generous donation to the young lady’s prosecution team, a couple charities, and dividing up the windfall with his partners, Sarge had suggested Simmons maybe taking a vacation in another country til the heat died off on this case. 

Apparently the CEO they screwed was pissed off enough to hire some freelancers to track _them_ down to pay for the theft, and it had been Simmons’ turn to be the face of this particular operation. 

He wasn’t too worried though. He’d earned some down time, and the coffee was great. 

But he almost spit out his coffee when he saw the dark head in the water. His heart started going a million miles a second before he realized a hit man probably wasn’t going to show up _in his pool._ Where would he even keep the gun? 

Simmons squinted, but his contacts weren’t in, and the dark shape of the person was back lit in the sunset. A cloud of long dark hair flowing around them, couldn’t make out their face either, but he was 100% sure they had been staring at him. 

“Hey-!” Simmons called out. He wasn’t sure how he was going to finish the exclamation. _‘Hey, this is my ill-gotten scam money vacation. Get out of my pool, asshole!’_ But as soon as he spoke, the person dove under the water, swimming fast for where the pool went back into the ocean. 

Before Simmons could think of what else to do besides yell some more—give him a break, his pre-coffee brain was working very slow—when the person, larger than he had thought, dove over the water wall from the pool to the sea. 

A tidal wave of salt water washed over and completely drenched Simmons, ruining his coffee. 

By the time he had wiped the water out of his eyes, the trespasser was gone. 

_Well…_ He thought as he stared out into the waves, shivering and dripping cold water straight from the ocean onto the rocks. _I’m awake now._

* * *

Simmons assumed it was some punk kid, but the villa was so far off from anywhere he wasn’t sure where they were coming from. The next night, he felt himself being stared at through the large curtainless windows, but every time he looked out into the back, there was no one there. Although a few times he saw a suspicious ripple at the top of the water. 

The third night, he thought he heard _two_ people laughing and splashing. 

Alright, that was it. Simmons was only here for a few weeks, but he rented this place fair and square (sort of), and he wasn’t going to take this bullshit from a high end rental resort. 

When he reported the incidents to security, new cameras were installed, and he was shown how to work the security system, but somehow the trespasser kept getting in, always just out of frame of the camera. 

Simmons started running out of the house whenever he felt like he was being watched, but he only ever got close enough to receive a goodbye splash to the face. It felt like the intruder was _playing with him._ Like the fuck knew how much this was driving him crazy! 

It was on the seventh day of this insanity that things changed abruptly. 

Simmons came back to the villa after a long hard day of shopping for cool designer sunglasses and knew something was off as soon as he stepped out of his bright red convertible. 

On a hunch, he walked quietly around the back to see if the stranger was in the pool again before entering the house. 

The pool was clear and still. No sign of the trespasser. 

…But large wet footprints clearly trailed from the heated pool to the back door of the villa, which was slightly ajar. 

The footprints were still big puddles, recent, and no trail led back out that he could see. 

The intruder was still here… 


	3. Chapter 3

Merfolk used to live all over the world, as many places as humans lived, but Grif’s mother had moved with a pod of the remaining mermaids of the South Pacific and settled off the coast of this island before he and his sister had even been hatched. 

It wasn’t a bad life. The waters were usually calm and warm, there was still plenty of food in the deep, and lots of exploring to do. They took field trips to other oceans, but for most merfolk these days, this was home. There were enough of them to protect each other, and sing, and brush out their long hair to get the human trash out of it. 

Grif was pretty ambivalent about humans, but his sister Kaikaina’s fascination—and her tendency to get caught in nets, or find herself a boat party to crash—meant he had enough exposure to them. And some of their garbage _was_ interesting. 

Kai had started collecting human things along with deep ocean treasures early, and Grif joined along and added to it. Sometimes because it was shiny, or an interesting shape, or a good home for fish and crabs. 

There was only one bauble Grif kept to himself, and when a cooler tide woke him from a mid-afternoon snooze in a patch of soft sea moss and sand, he reached into one of his many bolt holes to retrieve it, rubbing it’s greened surface with his thumb till it shone again. 

There were shinier treasures, but since he’d stumbled upon it outside an old shipwreck in a colder part of the Atlantic, he’d always felt an embarrassing affinity for this one. He fiddled with the clasp and managed to fasten the chain of the large golden locket around his neck. As usual, an odd sensation of happy bubbles rushed through his chest and head. 

Grif didn’t often feel like exploring anymore. But maybe he wanted to tonight. 

He broke the surface to the sky red and orange with the sun setting and squinted in the light before diving shallowly, following a pod of dolphins for a bit, but increasingly drawn to the land. Another odd impulse for him, but with an internal shrug, he did a quick horizontal spin and let the current take him. 

\- 

The storm came up too fast to swim away from. One minute, the sky was clear, and the next, the clouds were purple and blue, and the ocean was churning. 

Grif still attempted to get away. Merfolk were tough, and it took a lot to get hurt, but being swung around and dashed against rocks was still not a fun time. 

…But, with his luck that was still exactly what happened. He woke up pressed against a slanted rock wall, dizzy, his skin warmed and drying in the sun. 

He had … legs? Puzzled, Grif absently fiddled with the golden bauble around his neck as he studied his new legs and feet, and another appendage that was suddenly exposed. 

He was probably still a little disoriented from the storm knocking him around, but he stood up on his new feet easily. They were dark like the rest of his skin, no orange fins or scales to be seen. Huh… 

Grif had never had legs. He didn’t even know anyone who had legs before. Merfolk legend was that you only grew human legs when you were in love with a human. 

That was definitely bullshit because Grif was never even close to humans when he could help it, let alone had any direct contact. Must’ve been his skin drying when he was passed out on the rocks? … Nifty. 

He finally looked away from the strange changes to his body to see where the storm had brought him. The ocean was at his back and there was a stone pool in front of him, the water lapping invitingly. Hm… 

He dove in, grinning as the water embraced him with no hesitation, his tail returning to him like he’d never lost it. He splashed happily, whipping back and forth around the pool. Comforted, and a little more curious to experiment with having legs again later, now that he knew they were easily gotten rid of when he was tired of them. 

It was still sunset, but the sky was darker now. The storm had passed quickly. 

“Ugh…” came the groan of an unfamiliar voice. 

Grif ducked low in the water, so only his eyes were up to peek at the human who just appeared. 

The man was tall, and very leggy, wearing tan pants of some light material and sandals that divided his human toes. His red hair blew in the wind from the ocean as he sipped from an earthen container. He looked only half awake. Like Grif felt most of the time, but Grif felt awake right now. 

He’d never been this close, alone, to a human, and he was— 

“Hey-!” The human shouted, _staring straight at him_. 

Grif kicked his tail into gear and flew over the barrier wall, swimming as fast as his fins could carry him, heart pounding. 

But he knew, even then, that he was going back to see the angry tired human with the sad eyes. 

\- 

Grif was glad he brought snacks the next night. This was better than backseat TV watching at the Crab Shack! 

That was one of his and Kai’s favorite local haunts. Plenty of fish and shellfish they could ‘borrow’ from the humans’ nets and not have to hunt on their own. Plus people watching, and TVs. That was one thing he wished the merfolk had an equivalent of. Though watching octopus tricks was fun too. 

At this human’s home there was a wall sized TV at the perfect angle to be seen through the wall sized windows from Grif’s position in the pool, and the guy watched with English subtitles. Conveniently it was one of the languages the Grifs had picked up around the harbors. They were both good at lip reading too, so it was interesting to see how humans wrote the words out. 

But watching this human was, for once, even more entertaining than the colorful world of TV. Grif pried open another clam and slurped the contents, discarding the shell as he watched the human pace back and forth, muttering to himself. 

It looked like he was making food? Grif’s end fins vibrated with interest as he stretched his torso out of the water to get a better look. 

Humans liked to fire their food—cook. Sometimes, it wasn’t even fish. Man, Grif really wanted to try some… 

The man dropped the heavy cooking pot on his foot, hopping around and cursing. Grif laughed aloud. Definitely better than TV. 

The human suddenly looked over, and Grif ducked, timing it the 20 seconds it usually took the man to go back to his business. Then he inched his hand up the side of the pool to feel around for another clam to snack on under the surface. 

\- 

Kai made fun of him for going back after she accompanied him once, saying it was a stupid place to hang out when they had to bring their own snacks. But she did agree the man looked kinda crazy, and that was hot. 

Grif wouldn’t say he was _hot,_ but he wasn’t bad looking for a human. He couldn’t really put into words why he felt drawn to him. But it was fun to watch him. The way his eyebrows and mouth turned down then up within a moment, and the way he snarled like merfolk fighting over the last bunch of mussels. 

Speaking of, Grif was out of snacks for the day, and the man wasn’t there to watch this particular afternoon. He’d become bored waiting for him to return and now his stomach was growling. 

…Grif knew there was food inside. He’d seen it. 

He flopped up onto the edge of the pool, drying in the sun. Legs might come in handy. 


	4. Chapter 4

_What the fuck?_

There was someone in Simmons’ villa. There was a naked someone in Simmons’ kitchen in his villa that he rented for vacation. 

Naked. Bare Ass Naked. And rummaging in his fridge. 

“What. The. Fuck.” 

The stranger’s head jerked up, spotting Simmons. 

Simmons’ eyes went straight to the gold locket around the stranger’s neck first—an occupational hazard, since so many schemes involved antiques. The necklace was partially obscured by long damp and curling hair that flowed past his shoulders. 

He was tan, with very smooth unblemished skin. A broad man, stocky but strong. Not old, though it was hard to tell his age. Around Simmons’? Mid to late twenties? But there was something young about his eyes when they locked with Simmons’. 

Or maybe he looked young because of the chocolate cake smeared around his mouth, no doubt from the fancy bakery Simmons had got it from. He’d been saving that! 

What the hell was Simmons waxing poetic about? This guy was obviously crazy or having some kind of mental break. 

Simmons grabbed the first thing he could use to defend himself. A huge ass knife from the butcher’s block. –Uh, okay, that was too big. Simmons was a scam artist, not a murderer. 

He switched it for a slightly smaller knife. That’d be enough. Not like this lunatic had anywhere to stow a gun. 

Simmons’ hand clenched around the knife, but before he had the chance to threaten the very naked young man in his house, _he scampered away._

“Hey—!” Simmons said after a second of disbelief, watching the naked butt of the naked man run off to his bedroom and not to the _exit._ Simmons' life was unbelievable. 

His irritation grew as he followed a trail of snack wrappers back to his bedroom. And banana and orange peels, and an apple with one bite out of it tossed to the side… and what looked like that one bite spit out a foot later. 

This resort’s security sucked. Wasn’t this place gated? Was this naked guy another guest? 

Maybe he should drop the knife. He’d had his own mental break during college. Simmons followed the man, grabbing a lamp along the way. Maybe non-lethal force would be better. He could just hit the guy with a lamp and call the police. Easy. 

But what if this guy was on bath salts? And if he was, was he gonna try and eat Simmons' face off? Maybe he shouldn’t drop the knife. 

“Hey, asshole!” he declared when he found the stranger in his walk-in closet. –Was he actually trying to hide in there? He was a full grown man! “What the hell are you doing here?” 

Those eyes stared out at him from between a designer hoodie and a suit jacket, and now instead of youthful they looked ancient, which took Simmons aback a little. 

They were dark brown before, but now they looked dark gray against the colors of his closet, like a storm over an ocean, vaguely threatening. 

Then the stranger ducked inside the hooded sweatshirt, and when he popped back up, brandishing a clothes hanger at Simmons, he suddenly seemed harmless again. Curious, but waving the hanger to keep Simmons out of a large personal space bubble. 

There was a hanger in the back of the hoodie that the stranger had popped into, and it was a little snug on his shoulders and belly, but it was over-sized on Simmons, so it actually covered some bits Simmons had been uncomfortable being exposed to. 

The stranger’s eyes narrowed and he bull-charged Simmons, running him over, lamp and knife and all, and booked it to the back door overlooking the ocean that Simmons had closed behind him. 

The stranger smacked straight into the glass comically. He slid down, blinking, disoriented and stunned. 

It gave Simmons time to grab a belt to secure his hands with. Then he tersely called the security office to get the police, since he didn’t know the emergency numbers. 

“Who are you?” Simmons demanded once he was off the phone. 

The man just stared, blinking slowly. He actually looked irritated, as if Simmons had _interrupted him_ trespassing in Simmons’ villa. 

He tried in his limited Spanish. The stranger just frowned at him more. 

“You broke into the wrong place,” he said, in English again. “You’re lucky I didn’t decide to take you out. Or stab you, with a knife. It would have been self-defense. No court in the world would blame me.” 

The man gave him a doubtful look, rolling his eyes, which pissed Simmons off even more. He seemed like he was understanding him, _and mocking him._

“Seriously, what the fuck? You just walk around naked and eat people’s food?!” 

He snapped a photo to send off to Donut to illustrate his mortal peril in case his colleague decided not to believe him, and texted it to him as they waited for the police. 

It wasn’t until after they’d taken the naked stranger away—no longer naked, since Simmons decided he could keep the hoodie—that he got Donut’s text back. 

The locket Simmons had vaguely noticed earlier. Donut had noticed it too. And he had an appraisal. 

…Simmons had to track down the crazy guy again. Five million dollars had just broken into his place, and Simmons had let it walk right out. 


End file.
